Blurts & Spasms

It’s really pretty simple :

1. Right-wing extremists have been responsible for the vast majority of domestic terrorism in the U.S.A. over the last few decades — and for the vast majority of murders in the course of that political violence as well.

2. Conspiracy theories, groupthink, and brainwashing are present on the far Left, but in only a fairly small percentage (my research estimates about 14% of the Left has succumbed to such maladies). On the right, however, I estimate the numbers to be closer to 35%. If we assume the U.S. electorate to be about equality divided, this means there are more than twice as many folks who are willfully deluded on the Right than on the Left. We should be afraid of giving such folks more political power, right? For example, electing 2020 election deniers to oversee future elections, etc.

3. The “Trump effect.” 70 million people voted a skeevy conman with serious mental issues and a huge ego into office. Putting someone like Trump in the most powerful position on the planet is just…inexcusable. The amount of damage Trump did to the global reputation of the U.S., to our domestic rule of law, to democracy, and to civil society itself is truly epic. And, needless to say, his antics nearly destroyed the GOP as well.

4. The far Right is utterly misinformed about…well…most things, really. Most of the concepts in far-Right ideology represent what I call “broken brain syndrome,” having no basis in fact or good evidence, often promoting strategies that have never demonstrated any causal link with the problems they want to solve. The far-Right rank-and-file are poster children for the Dunning-Kruger effect, where their profound ignorance makes them overconfident. That’s an inherently dangerous combination. And although folks may find the far Left’s vision of the future (i.e. less capitalism, greater democracy, etc.) unattractive, there simply isn’t as much counterfactual fervor there. Those on the far Left are generally much better educated about facts, history, and evidence than those on the far Right.

5. Far Left solutions have actually been tried and have succeeded historically all around the world (for example, take a look at these left-anarchist communities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anarchist_communities). Far Right solutions either have not been tried, or they have utterly failed (examples: austerity measures by conservative policymakers around the globe, Milton Friedman's disastrous interventions in Chile, nearly all deregulation in the U.S., the World Bank's structural adjustment policies in the developing world, etc).

6. As you can see from far-Right-leaning discussion of this and almost every other topic, they lie. A lot. For example, take a look at the "factual reporting" ratings of nearly all far right media sources on www.mediabiasfactcheck.com, and then review how many of those extreme rightwing bias sources are rated as "conspiracy-pseudoscience." Shouldn’t we be hesitant to trust liars?

My 2 cents.